1. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to diagnosing the status of system functions and presenting the status to a user. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to determining the status of functions performed by or for a complex system, such as an aircraft, from traffic on a data network of the complex system, and presenting the status to a user via a user interface.
2. Background
A complex system may be defined as any system that is comprised of a number of systems. Each of the number of systems is designed to perform one or more functions for the complex system. When the number of systems is functioning properly, the complex system is functioning properly. Thus, the status of operation of a complex system may be determined by the status of operation of the various complex system functions.
The systems forming a complex system may include various data processing devices. These various data processing devices may be connected together via a data network. The data processing devices may place data on the data network and may receive data from the data network. The data network thus provides for communication between the various systems of the complex system. Communication between the systems provides for monitoring and control of the complex system by monitoring and control of the systems that form the complex system via the data network.
An aircraft is one example of a complex system. An aircraft may include a number of systems. These systems may be in communication with each other via a data network on the aircraft. For example, modern aircraft use data communication buses to share command, control, and state information between various systems within the aircraft. Other examples of complex systems include other vehicles, such as spacecraft, land vehicles, and water vehicles. Non-vehicular examples of complex systems include power plants, manufacturing facilities, and the like. Any such complex system may use one or more data networks to provide communication between the various systems that form the complex system.
An example of a data network used to provide communication between systems on an aircraft is an aircraft data network. For example, Aeronautical Radio Inc. 664, ARINC 664, is a standard for an aircraft data network used in commercial and transport aircraft. This standard defines physical and electrical interfaces of a data network and a data protocol for an aircraft's local area network. The ARINC 664 standard is based on the IEEE 802.3 network standard and uses commercial off-the-shelf hardware.
The Avionics Full Duplex Switched Ethernet network, AFDX, is built on the ARINC 664 standard. AFDX uses a switch tied to a number of end systems or line replaceable units. Each end system may be bridged using other switches on the network. The communications traffic between aircraft systems on the AFDX network is primarily in the form of uni-cast and multi-cast datagrams. AFDX provides dual redundancy to increase availability on connectionless datagram communication. AFDX uses less wiring than many previous commercial aircraft networks. Since AFDX is full duplex, data can travel across a single set of wires in both directions simultaneously. In previous aircraft networks, such as ARINC 429, a network would be established for each transmitting system or device.